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An international group of scientists from Russia, the United Kingdom, and Germany have presented an alternative qubit design which can be used to build a quantum computer. Nano-wires made of superconductors are the design’s main elements. In the first experiments, the new superconductor qubit proved to be no worse than the traditional one built on Josephson junctions.
Scientists expect quantum computers to achieve landmarks. Although the universal quantum computer hasn’t been created yet, scientists can already design chemical compounds and materials with the help of qubits. The calculation principle on its basis even allows researchers to solve complex problems today. That is why many scientific groups are working on improving quantum computer elements. Studying and improving qubits, which are the main computational cells of the quantum computer, are the most challenging part of that process.
There are several approaches to creating qubits. For example, there are qubits that work in optical range. However, they are difficult to scale, unlike qubits on superconductors operating in radio range and based on so-called Josephson transitions. Every such transition is a break in the superconductor, or to be more specific — a dielectric layer through which electrons tunnel.
The new qubit is based on the effect of quantum phase slip — the controlled periodic failure and recovery of superconductivity in ultra-thin (about 4 nm) nano-wires which in their normal state have fairly large resistance. Professor Oleg Astafiev, head of the Artifical Quantum Systems Laboratory at MIPT in Russia and a researcher at the University of London and the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington (United Kingdom), was the first who experimentally observed this effect, which had previously been theorized. His pioneering work was published in Nature in 2012.
Professor Ustinov, one of researchers on the project, head of the RQC research group, head of the Laboratory of Superconducting Metamaterials at NUST MISIS, and Professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), noted that researchers have managed to create a new type of superconducting device that in many ways is similar to SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device), a supersensitive magnetometer based on Josephson transitions.
The interference in the new device is caused by an electric field (instead of a magnetic field) that changes the electric charge on the island between the two nano-wires. These wires fill the role of Josephson junctions, and better yet, they do not require the creation of a break and can be made from a single layer of a superconductor.
